People tied up ‘like animals’ on UK deportation flights

Commercial contractors routinely belt immigration detainees into restraints so extreme that they are rarely used in
prisons.

Charter Flight by Oviyan for Corporate Watch

A woman being deported
from the UK to Pakistan was compliant and cooperative throughout the process.
Still, the commercial contractor Tascor, working for the UK Home Office,
strapped the woman into a waist restraint belt until after the plane had taken
off.

One man on suicide watch was strapped into a waist restraint belt even
though there was no evidence that he posed a risk to others. Another man, who
refused to board a deportation flight, was belted continuously for eight long
hours. His wrists swelled. He was examined by a paramedic.

These cases have come
to light in two new reports by
HM Inspectorate of Prisons. The inspectors also found that waist
restraint belts were used six times on three flights to Pakistan, and that
approaches to security were “unduly indiscriminate in some respects”.

Government advisers have described the waist belt
as “a custom-designed piece of restraint equipment, manufactured from manmade
fibres and using plastic snap-locks and Velcro fasteners, designed to be worn
around the subject’s waist. Soft cuffs, with plastic snap-lock and Velcro
fasteners, are attached to the belt by retractable cords.”

They said: “In the ‘free’ position, although
still connected to the belt, the cords are long enough to allow the subject
relatively free movement of his arms and hands (for example, for eating). In
the ‘retracted’ position, the subject’s hands are pulled in to the front of the
belt, where they can be further secured by a snap-lock fastened mesh.”

Inspectors described the waist belt as “almost
equivalent … to the most extreme and very rarely used” restraint equipment in
prisons.

The belts were introduced by the Home Office as
part of a new training program for deportation staff, that was prompted by the
unlawful killing of Angolan
deportee Jimmy Mubenga by G4S guards in 2010.

The independent
panel that advised on the use of the new equipment warned last year
that “indiscriminate use of the restraint belt was not justifiable ethically or
legally”. It said ministers would have to approve its introduction and it
should only be used as “an exceptional measure”.

The coroner who presided over the inquest into
Mubenga’s death wrote in a Prevention
of Future Deaths Report in July 2013: “It goes
without saying that the use of a body-cuff would constitute a significant
interference in the bodily integrity of any person to whom it is applied.
Dignity and bodily integrity are matters in which close regard must be had in
determining what new techniques are to be introduced.”

Yet HM Inspectorate of Prisons has found
that the waist restraint belts “were now embedded in practice” and that they
risked “being overused”. On three flights to Nigeria and Ghana, the belts were
used ten times. Inspectors said that “the justification for several of these
uses was not explicit in the records” which they examined. On another flight,
the belt was used on eight passengers, even though five of them did not resist
being put on the flight. Inspectors said: “while risk factors were used to
justify each case, the evidence was sometimes minimal.”

Tascor promotional material

Some authorisation
forms for using restraints “did not indicate what specific risk factors might
have existed”, and lacked sufficient detail, the inspectors noted. This appears to falls short of the
Home Office’s own guidance on
the use of these belts, which requires a senior manager to record “whether the
restraint was reasonable, proportionate and necessary”.

Two detainees
arrived at the airport “in a small van that had been contaminated with their
urine”. The men were then kept in the van for several hours, which, according to the inspectors, was “unacceptable treatment”.

The inspectors noted that one man, who was on
suicide watch, had lived in Britain for 15 years and was being taken away from
his mother who was very ill in hospital here. Another man who was placed in
one of the waist restraint belts had been on suicide watch for the previous
six months in a series of detention centres.

The investigative organisation Corporate Watch
tracked down one detainee who was on the same deportation flight as the man on
suicide watch mentioned in the inspectors’ report.

Speaking under the condition of anonymity, the
witness described the scene on board: “A lot of people were tied up, in like a
vest on your tummy and arms,” he said. “They tightened up the back so you
cannot move and you have pain in your back. You cannot move your hands. They
put people on that plane like animals.”

Corporate Watch spoke to one former detainee who
claims he was recently restrained by guards in a device which sounds similar to
the new belts. He says it blocked his airflow and caused him to pass out. He
spoke anonymously, fearing reprisals from the Home Office:

“The
guards tried to pin me down with their legs and their knees. After some time
they put a belt from under my my armpit down to my abdomen. They started
tightening it and I was screaming and screaming ‘This is too tight for me!’”

He went on: “After some time I passed out – there
was no air. Someone shouted that they should put me in the recovery position. I
was in panic and hyperventilating. They held my head and tried to force a
tablet into my mouth. I was choking and gagging for 30 minutes.”

Despite his passing out, the guards continued
trying to deport him, the man claimed. “They put me in a wheelchair and moved me into the
deportation van. On the way to the airport my condition deteriorated and they
called an ambulance on the motorway and I went to hospital for some hours.”

He says he was taken to hospital in handcuffs,
despite the new Home Office policy. “I was still handcuffed on the way to
hospital. The handcuffs cut the bone of my wrist and I’m having pain in the
scrotum and lower back from the assault,” he said.

One young man, Fred
(not his real name), scaled the fence at Harmondsworth detention centre. The
inspectors said this caused “considerable delay” in taking people to the
airport. Whenever Home Office officials tried to come near him, Fred threatened
to jump. A mattress was placed underneath him. The flight left without him, and at the end of the night he came down from the fence.

One week later Corporate Watch visited Fred in
detention. He said he was born in Sierra Leone, where his father, an aid worker
with the British Red Cross, was killed during the civil war. He had lived in
the UK since he was 11 years old with his surviving family. He said all the
detainees were talking about not wanting to go on the flight, “but no one was
doing anything. So I got up the fence and they couldn't touch me”.

At 24, he had spent the past two years of his
life in detention, apart from one brief spell when he was released on tag, and
required to walk miles each day to report to the Home Office.

His face was vacant and expressionless. Detention
was sucking the life out of him. He was being deported on the basis of police
‘intelligence’, not evidence or convictions, of association with a London gang.
Operation Nexus allows the Met Police to bar people from the UK if officers
believe someone is not conducive to the public good. Despite Fred’s desperate
resistance, he was later deported to Sierra Leone.

Another deportation flight for dozens of
Nigerians from London to Lagos, is scheduled for Tuesday 24th November.
Campaigners from Movement for Justice rallied outside the Nigerian High Commissioner
on Wednesday 18th, and women in Yarl’s Wood detention centre published
a statement opposing the flight, saying “we refused to be
slaves to the British government”.

HMIP reports published 20 November, 2015:

Detainees under escort: Inspection of
escort and removals to Nigeria and Ghana (28 – 29 July 2015) PDF

Detainees under escort: Inspection of
escorts and removals to Pakistan (30 June – 1 July 2015) PDF

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